21 Secretly Healthy Cookie Recipes

Now is your chance to leave requests for all of the cookies you’d like to see given a healthy makeover! For the next few weeks, I’ll be creating some of these reader requests and posting them on the blog. Please feel free to make as many requests as you wish in the comments below!

Meanwhile, here are 20 secretly healthy cookies that would make the perfect gift to bake for friends or coworkers. They are also terrific for not sharing and eating all by yourself. Just saying…

Once again, please feel free to leave your makeover healthy holiday cookie requests in the comments below, and I’ll get to work on creating them! And check back tomorrow to get the first new recipe. Hope you are excited for an entire month devoted to holiday cookies!!! 🙂

Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a food processor, add the oats and pulse until a coarse meal forms (see picture in blog post).
In a large bowl, mash the banana. Stir in the rest of the ingredients, except the jam and nut butter. The mixture will be very wet and dense.
With a retractable ice cream scoop or a spoon, scoop the dough into 8 mounds. The cookies do not need to be spaced far apart on the baking sheet as they don’t spread out. Press your thumb (or small spoon) into the centre of each cookie to create a well. Fill each well with 1 heaping teaspoon of jam.
Bake cookies at 350F for 11-13 minutes, until the cookies are slightly firm, but soft and doughy in the middle. Transfer cookies to a cooling rack for 10 minutes or so.
If desired, serve cookies with your favourite nut or seed butter. They also taste great with a pat of coconut oil or vegan butter!
Note: To make the cookies nut-free, omit the peanut butter or swap it with sunflower seed butter instead. 2) For those allergic to banana, you might be able to sub it with applesauce (and you might need a couple tbsp of granulated sugar to make up for the sweetness of the banana). I haven’t tried this yet, but I will update this recipe if I do!

I have no idea if this is possible, but it would be amazing if you could come up with a vegan and healthier version of a cookie similar to the French macaron!
If not, I would love another variation of breakfast cookies, or some soft baked funfetti cookies!

So many healthy cookie choices to choose from! :DD
I can’t have any sugar at all, so I substitute stevia for all the sugar in dessert recipes, but my family usually doesn’t like it very much. I really do enjoy sugar(stevia) cookies! But my favorite cookie this season would probably be spicy oatmeal cookies with icing! I haven’t yet found a decorator icing for cookies without any sugar, though. Any type of sugar-free cookie that the whole family can enjoy for the holidays would be absolutely lovely!
Thank you so much Katie for your wonderful recipes! I don’t know what I’d do without them! 😀

Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a food processor, add the oats and pulse until a coarse meal forms (see picture in blog post).
In a large bowl, mash the banana. Stir in the rest of the ingredients, except the jam and nut butter. The mixture will be very wet and dense.
With a retractable ice cream scoop or a spoon, scoop the dough into 8 mounds. The cookies do not need to be spaced far apart on the baking sheet as they don’t spread out. Press your thumb (or small spoon) into the centre of each cookie to create a well. Fill each well with 1 heaping teaspoon of jam.
Bake cookies at 350F for 11-13 minutes, until the cookies are slightly firm, but soft and doughy in the middle. Transfer cookies to a cooling rack for 10 minutes or so.
If desired, serve cookies with your favourite nut or seed butter. They also taste great with a pat of coconut oil or vegan butter!
Note: To make the cookies nut-free, omit the peanut butter or swap it with sunflower seed butter instead. 2) For those allergic to banana, you might be able to sub it with applesauce (and you might need a couple tbsp of granulated sugar to make up for the sweetness of the banana). I haven’t tried this yet, but I will update this recipe if I do!

I commented on this post previously but I had a very random question. I’m a senior in high school and in the midst of applying to colleges, one of them being Bryn Mawr. I remember reading that you went there but transferred–was it strange being at an all-girl’s school? Any input/thoughts from a former student who attended would be very helpful! Sorry if this is too off-topic

Bryn Mawr is beautiful, and I loved being so close to Philadelphia. For me, it was just too small. Classes filled up quickly, and it was not uncommon to end up having to take a class not in one’s major when all of the desired classes were filled. There are many positives to the school, though, so please don’t let me sway you against it if you visit and love it. It was also quite a while ago that I was there. https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2010/06/25/my-real-life-part-1/

I made your ginger butter and used it in your peanut butter cookie recipe, following it exactly except I subbed greek yogurt for applesauce and I omitted the 2 tbsp of brown sugar because I only had full flavor molasses to make the ginger butter. I love how they turned out! It tastes kind of like a soft gingerbread cookie, but with a bit of peanut butter.

Hi. These all look amazing, but the one I really want to try is no.2, the pixie one, but the link and the photo just take me to your book and I can’t see the recipe! It’s probably me doing something silly but the other links work?

Dear Katie,
We are totally in love with your recipes! We are raising two young daughters and we are totally dedicated to their health. We have childhood memories of candy canes and butter cookies but feel like we can offer our girls the lovely experience of family cookie baking without using sugar or animal products. So far so good! I think, however, I might need your help: my eldest daughter, aged 3, is completely in love with The Little House on the Prairie books, and sees Pa bring in a skillet of snow. Ma and the girls then use it to make molasses candy. Me, NOT thinking of how they did this, promised at the first snow that we would learn how to make molasses candy. So here I go looking up a recipe thinking I’m gonna get the CoolMomAward for the week when I’m ready to follow through on this fantasy and the recipe is basically straight Sugar Syrup. Help! How can we make this using whole plant based sweeteners? The recipe mentions using a candy thermometer and I am way out of my area of expertise!

I’m just going to spew off a couple of cookies I miss from back in the day and see if it gives you any inspiration:

-Nilla wafers
-Teddy Grahams (okay, these first two aren’t technically “cookies”, but they’re definitely not crackers, nor healthy or GF/vegan!)
-Sugar wafers (ya know, that come in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry and only cost like a buck for a pack the size of a keyboard?)

No chocolate in these….I might have to re-comment when I’m feeling more myself!